145-Foot Inflatable Dome to Rise in Nation's Hot Air Capital, D.C.

Washington, D.C. isn't exactly a hotbed of architectural experimentation. But that's about to change: Diller Scofidio + Renfro is planning to build a giant, 145-foot inflatable add-on to the somber Hirschorn Museum. As The New York Times reports:

[The] inflatable meeting
hall that would swell out of the top of the internal courtyard of the
museum, which sits on the Mall midway between the White House and the
Capitol.

...the translucent fabric structure, which would be installed
twice a year, for May and October, and be packed away in storage the
rest of the time, would transform one of the most somber buildings on
the mall into a luminous pop landmark.

It could be the most uplifting work of civic architecture built in the capital since I. M. Pei completed his East Building of the National Gallery of Art more than 30 years ago...Mr. Koshalek's vision would challenge that mentality by using
performing arts, film series and conferences to foster a wide-ranging
public debate on cultural values.

But this new project heralds a return to their scrappier, more experimental roots, best exemplified by their spectacular Blur Building, which was really a scaffold of misting devices that created a floating cloud atop a lake in Switzerland.

But DS+R isn't pioneering inflatable architecture—though the Hirschorn project's scale would be unprecedented, people have been experimenting with it for 40 years. Here's eight examples drawn from our previous history of inflatable architecture.

But backing up a bit: The idea of inflatable architecture began in the 1960s. Here's one by the visionary, almost forgotten American firm Jersey Devil; below that is a 1970 project by Ant Farm—whom you probably know from their outdoor installation Cadillac Ranch, which featured ten cars buried halfway into the ground:

Below, the artist Michael Rakowitz created ParaSITE, in 1988. Intended as a wry joke about the waste products which we never think about, it used the HVAC exhaust from buildings to inflate the structure:

Alexis Rochas, an architecture professor at SCI-Arc, created this installation in 2006. Computers were used to cut more precise shapes; Rochas had the idea that in the future, we'd pack our homes into a suitcase:

In 2006, Rem Koolhaas and engineer Cecil Balmond created what I personally think is the best pavilion ever seen on the grounds of the Serpentine Gallery in London (the museum invites an architect to erect a new temporary structure every summer):

Norwegian firm mmw architects created this installation in 2005, to connect four separate buildings:

Also in 2005, Kengo Kuma created this Tea House on the grounds of museum in Frankfurt: